Australia won't sell uranium to India
The Times of India
Australia's new Labour government on Tuesday said it would not sell uranium to India because it's not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
While India was banking upon countries like Australia, which has the world's largest known reserves of uranium, to bolster its still fledgling nuclear power generation programme, the problem is not considered insurmountable.
"The decision was not a complete surprise since we knew the stand of theAustralian Labour Party (ALP). It's a setback but we can always turn to other countries like Canada, which is also a major uranium producer," said an official.
Australia's new policy move overturns the in-principle decision taken by the previous Conservative government led by John Howard in August 2007 to supply uranium to India if the Indo-US nuclear deal was operationalised after an India-specific safeguards agreement with International Atomic Energy Agency and the requisite waiver by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.
But with the Australian Labour Party led by Kevin Rudd coming to power in Canberra last November, the new foreign minister Stephen Smith told India's special envoy Shyam Saran in Perth on Tuesday that it was a 'strict no' as far as uranium was concerned.
"It's a long-standing commitment of ALP and we went into the election with a strong policy statement that we would not export uranium to countries not members of NPT," said Smith, even as he said Australia wanted to take the relationship with India to "an even better level" on other fronts.
Australia, incidentally, exports uranium to over 30 countries for civilian use and power generation, and even signed a uranium transfer and nuclear cooperation pact with China, a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a nuclear weapon state, in 2006.
Despite Australia having a long-standing policy of not exporting the nuclear fuel to non-NPT countries, the Howard government had decided to negotiate the uranium export relationship with India, in keeping with the US government's decision to make an exception for India in the global nuclear world order.
While India was banking upon countries like Australia, which has the world's largest known reserves of uranium, to bolster its still fledgling nuclear power generation programme, the problem is not considered insurmountable.
"The decision was not a complete surprise since we knew the stand of theAustralian Labour Party (ALP). It's a setback but we can always turn to other countries like Canada, which is also a major uranium producer," said an official.
Australia's new policy move overturns the in-principle decision taken by the previous Conservative government led by John Howard in August 2007 to supply uranium to India if the Indo-US nuclear deal was operationalised after an India-specific safeguards agreement with International Atomic Energy Agency and the requisite waiver by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.
But with the Australian Labour Party led by Kevin Rudd coming to power in Canberra last November, the new foreign minister Stephen Smith told India's special envoy Shyam Saran in Perth on Tuesday that it was a 'strict no' as far as uranium was concerned.
"It's a long-standing commitment of ALP and we went into the election with a strong policy statement that we would not export uranium to countries not members of NPT," said Smith, even as he said Australia wanted to take the relationship with India to "an even better level" on other fronts.
Australia, incidentally, exports uranium to over 30 countries for civilian use and power generation, and even signed a uranium transfer and nuclear cooperation pact with China, a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a nuclear weapon state, in 2006.
Despite Australia having a long-standing policy of not exporting the nuclear fuel to non-NPT countries, the Howard government had decided to negotiate the uranium export relationship with India, in keeping with the US government's decision to make an exception for India in the global nuclear world order.